Grazia Cicirelli

• Technologist at Italian National Research Council

Human action recognition is an active topic of research in computer vision and machine learning. Its application in the industrial domain is even more challenging since workers can handle multiple objects and follow different assembly sequences, and only a few datasets are target-oriented. However, the availability of low-cost cameras capable of ex...

Person re-identification aims at recognizing the same person across multiple cameras or over different video frames in varying viewpoints, environments, and lighting conditions. Appearance matching in these challenging situations can be complex. In the last few years, thanks to the availability of RGB-D data, appearance matching has been addressed...

In recent years, the number of older people living alone has increased rapidly. Innovative vision systems to remotely assess people’s mobility can help healthy, active, and happy aging. In the related literature, the mobility assessment of older people is not yet widespread in clinical practice. In addition, the poor availability of data typically...

This paper introduces the Human Action Multi-Modal Monitoring in Manufacturing (HA4M) dataset, a collection of multi-modal data relative to actions performed by different subjects building an Epicyclic Gear Train (EGT). In particular, 41 subjects executed several trials of the assembly task, which consists of 12 actions. Data were collected in a la...

This paper reviews the recent literature on technologies and methodologies for quantitative human gait analysis in the context of neurodegnerative diseases. The use of technological instruments can be of great support in both clinical diagnosis and severity assessment of these pathologies. In this paper, sensors, features and processing methodologi...

Over the last decade, there has been considerable and increasing interest in the development of Active and Assisted Living (AAL) systems to support independent living. The demographic change towards an aging population has introduced new challenges to today’s society from both an economic and societal standpoint. AAL can provide an arrary of soluti...

This paper presents a 3D Vision-Based Shelf Monitoring system (3D-VSM) aimed at automatically estimating the On-Shelf Availability (OSA) of products in a retail store. The proposed solution exploits 3D data returned by a consumer-grade depth sensor to provide up-to-date information about product availability for customer purchase and eventually gen...

In recent years, the scientific community has found increasing interest in technological systems for the evaluation of the mobility performance of the elderly population. The reduced quantity of dataset for gait and balance analysis of elderly people is a serious issue in studying the link between cognitive impairment and motor dysfunction, particu...

Efficient management of on-shelf availability and inventory is a key issue to achieve customer satisfaction and reduce the risk of profit loss for both retailers and manufacturers. Conventional store audits based on physical inspection of shelves are labor-intensive and do not provide reliable assessment. This paper describes a novel framework for...

The detection of internal defects in composite materials, due to anomalies during the production processes, is a big issue especially for the production of large structures in aeronautic contexts. The costs of the repair processes can weigh upon the total costs, and sometimes the repair itself can be unfeasible and cause the material to be rejected...

This paper tackles the problem of people re-identification by using soft biometrics features. The method works on RGB-D data (color point clouds) to determine the best matching among a database of possible users. For each subject under testing, skeletal information in three-dimensions is used to regularize the pose and to create a skeleton standard...

Il progetto di ricerca industriale e sviluppo sperimentale denominato BESIDE intende applicare tecniche di intelligenza artificiale per l’analisi di pattern motori (Gait Analysis) e comportamentali di individui affetti da malattie neurodegenerative. In particolare, il progetto intende individuare i sensori più idonei e sviluppare un complesso siste...

In this paper we present a natural human computer interface based on gesture recognition. The principal aim is to study how different personalized gestures, defined by users, can be represented in terms of features and can be modelled by classification approaches in order to obtain the best performances in gesture recognition. Ten different gesture...

High resolution in distance (range) measurements can be achieved by means of accurate instrumentations and precise analytical models. This paper reports an improvement in the estimation of distance measurements performed by an omnidirectional range sensor already presented in literature. This sensor exploits the principle of laser triangulation, to...

This paper analyzes with a new perspective the recent state of-the-art on gesture recognition approaches that exploit both RGB and depth data (RGB-D images). The most relevant papers have been analyzed to point out which features and classifiers best work with depth data, if these fundamentals are specifically designed to process RGB-D images and,...

In this paper, we present a gesture recognition system for the development of a human-robot interaction (HRI) interface. Kinect cameras and the OpenNI framework are used to obtain real-time tracking of a human skeleton. Ten different gestures, performed by different persons, are defined. Quaternions of joint angles are first used as robust and sign...

In the last few decades, virtual reconstruction of objects has grown interest in the field of quality control. As known, smart manufactures need automatic systems for the real-time investigation of production yields, i.e. techniques, methods and technologies devoted to the analysis of quality. In particular, high-resolution systems are required for...

Networks of robots and sensors have been recognized to be a powerful tool for developing fully automated systems that monitor environments and daily life activities in Ambient Assisted Living applications. Nevertheless, issues related to active control of heterogeneous sensors for high-level scene interpretation and mission execution are still open...

Service robots are expected to be used in many household in the near future, provided that proper interfaces are developed for the human robot interaction. Gesture recognition has been recognized as a natural way for the communication especially for elder or impaired people. With the developments of new technologies and the large availability of in...

A Distributed Cooperative Architecture (DCA) for applications of Ambient Intelligence is presented. The proposed cooperative system is composed by several static cameras and by a team of multi-sensor mobile robots. The nodes of the robotic network can act with some degree of autonomy and can cooperate to perform general purpose complex tasks such a...

Every form of human gesture has been recognized in the literature as a means of providing natural and intuitive ways to interact with computers across many computer application domains. In this paper we propose a real time gesture recognition approach which uses a depth sensor to extract the initial human skeleton. Then, robust and significant feat...

In this paper we present a gesture recognition system for a natural human robot interaction. Service robots are expected to be used in many household in the near future, provided that natural interfaces are developed especially for the interaction with elder or impaired people. The large availability of inexpensive depth sensors has provided new op...

In this paper we present a reliable method to derive the differences between indoor environments using the comparison of high-resolution range images. Samples belonging to different acquisitions are firstly reduced preserving the topology of the scenes and then registered in the same system of reference through an iterative least-squares algorithm,...

In this paper a fast and innovative three-dimensional vision system, having high resolution in the surface reconstruction, is discussed. It is based on a triangulation 3D laser scanner with a linear beam shape. The high precision (few microns) is guaranteed by very small laser line width, small camera pixel-size and proper optical properties of the...

Distributed networks of sensors have been recognized to be a powerful tool for developing fully automated systems that monitor environments and human activities. Nevertheless, problems such as active control of heterogeneous sensors for high-level scene interpretation and mission execution are open. This paper presents the authors' ongoing research...

The creation of intelligent robots has been a major goal of Artificial Intelligence since the early days and has provided many motivations to Artificial Intelligence researchers. Therefore, a large body of research has been done in this field and many relevant results have shown that integration of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics techniques is...

A high-resolution vision system for the inspection of drilling tools is presented. A triangulation-based laser scanner is used to extract a three-dimensional model of the target aimed to the fast detection and characterization of surface defects. The use of two orthogonal calibrated handlings allows the achievement of precisions of the order of few...

People tracking is a central and crucial point for the development of intelligent surveillance systems. When multiple cameras are used, the problem becomes more challenging as people re-identification is needed. Humans can greatly change their appearance according to posture, clothing and lighting conditions, thus defining features that describe pe...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the use of passive RFID technology for the development of an autonomous surveillance robot. Passive RFID tags can be used for labelling both valued objects and goal‐positions that the robot has to reach in order to inspect the surroundings. In addition, the robot can use RFID tags for navigational p...

In the last few years, multi-robot systems have augmented their complexity, due to the increased potential of novel sensors and actuators, and in order to satisfy the requirements of the applications they are involved into. For the development and testing of networked robotic systems, experimental testbeds are fundamental in order to verify the eff...

In this paper the problem of distributed target tracking is considered. A network of heterogeneous sensing agents is used to observe a maneuvering target and, at each iteration, all the agents are able to agree about the estimate of the target position, despite the fact that only a small percentage of agents can sense the target at each time instan...

In this work the complex behavior of localizing a mobile vehicle with respect to the door of the environment and then reaching the door has been developed. The robot uses visual information to detect and recognize the door and to determine its state with respect to it. This complex task has been divided into two separate behaviors: door-recognition...

RFID sensor modelling has been recognized as a fundamental step towards successful application of RFID technology in mobile robotics tasks, such as localization and environment mapping. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to passive RFID modelling, using fuzzy reasoning. Specifically, the RFID sensor model is defined as a combination of an R...

In this paper the problem of distributed target tracking is considered. A network of agents is used to observe a mobile target and, at each iteration, all the agents agree about the estimate of the target position, despite the fact that they only have local interactions and only a small percentage of them can sense the target. The proposed approach...

The development of intelligent surveillance systems is an active research area. In this context, mobile and multi-functional robots are generally adopted as means to reduce the environment structuring and the number of devices needed to cover a given area. Nevertheless, the number of different sensors mounted on the robot, and the number of complex...

We introduced two novel methods to estimate the location of passive RFID tags using a surveillance mobile robot equipped with RF reader and antennas, and a laser rangefinder. Both approaches are based on fuzzy logic and use a fuzzy model of the RFID system. The first method, referred to as Fuzzy Tag Localization (FTL), allows us to accurately local...

An autonomous mobile robotic system for surveillance of indoor environments is presented. Applications of the proposed system include surveillance of large environments such as airports, museums and warehouses. A multi-layer decision scheme controls different surveillance tasks. In particular, this paper focuses on two main functions: building an a...

Mobility and multi-functionality have been recognized as being basic requirements for the development of fully automated surveillance systems in realistic scenarios. Nevertheless, problems such as active control of heterogeneous mobile agents, integration of information from fixed and moving sensors for high-level scene interpretation, and mission...

Passive radio frequency identification (RFID) is being increasingly used in mobile robotics applications, as it provides inexpensive and effective solutions to data association issues in basic navigation tasks. Nonetheless, problems related to sensitivity of the signal to interference and reflections, and missing tag range and bearing information a...

This paper focuses on the control system for an autonomous robot for the surveillance of indoor environments. Our approach proposes a matrix-based formalism which allows us to merge in a single framework discrete-event supervisory control, conflict resolution and reactive control. As a consequence, the robot is able to autonomously handle high leve...

Passive RFID provides an inexpensive and effective support to basic mobile robot navigation tasks. Nonetheless, problems related to interference and reflections of the signal, and missing tag range and bearing information are open. In this paper, we present a novel method to estimate the bearing of a passive tag relative to a mobile robot equipped...

This paper describes a novel visual odometry algorithm for estimating the 6-DoF egomotion of a mobile robot using visual input from an on-board stereo head. The proposed approach is based on the detection and tracking of scale invariant features and employs an iterative scheme for effective outlier removal using 3D stereo data. The paper details th...

In this paper, we present our autonomous mobile robotic system for surveillance of indoor environments. The robot is equipped with a monocular camera, a laser scanner, encoders, and an RFID device, connected to a multi-layer decision and control scheme. Two main functions are implemented: to build a map of the environment, identifying specific area...

In this paper, we present a mobile robot global positioning system which combines passive RFID and monocular vision. The method is intended to solve the so-called kidnapped robot problem, that is, the problem of estimating the robot pose when it is first booted up or it has been kidnapped and taken to some unknown location. The main novelty of the...

In order to promote preservation of cultural heritage though guaranteeing accessibility to as much people as possible, novel technological solutions need to be researched. Methods from the mobile robotics field supply effective contributions to the development of environment modelling techniques that can be potentially used to either support the st...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of passive radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for environment mapping and surveillance by an autonomous mobile robot. Design/methodology/approach – Proposes a fuzzy inference method to localize RFID tags in the environment. Findings – Demonstrates that RFID technology can...

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is being increasingly used as an augmentation technology in the domain of environment mapping and ubiquitous computing. In this paper, we present a novel method for localizing RFID tags embedded in indoor environments, by using a mobile robot equipped with RF antennas and reader, and a laser range finder. First...

In this paper, we present a vision-based method for the automatic inspection of defects on ball bearings. A supervised neural network, employing a Multilayer Perceptron trained with the BackPropagation algorithm, is applied for discriminating defects. The images of the ball bearings are first mapped to a new space, called Defect Evaluation Space, t...

In this paper an omnidirectional Distributed Vision System (DVS) is presented. The presented DVS is able to learn to navigate a mobile robot in its working environment without any prior knowledge about calibration parameters of the cameras or the control law of the robot (this is an important feature if we want to apply this system to existing came...

This paper presents a novel multimodal approach for indoor environment monitoring by a mobile robot. The proposed system consists of a vision-based and a laser-based module that match independently the current scene with a stored one, looking for new or removed objects. The matching process, in both modules, uses clustering on local data to detect...

In this paper, the use of passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as a support technology for mobile robot navigation and environment mapping is investigated. A novel method for localizing passive RFID tags in a geometric map of the environment using fuzzy logic is, first, described. Then, it is shown how a mobile robot equipped with RF anten...

In this paper, a novel approach to automated inspection is presented, which uses a mobile robot equipped with a 2D laser rangefinder. The main idea underlying the proposed method is that of comparing current laser readings with local range data of the environment stored in a database, to look for new or removed objects. First, the robot is guided t...

This paper presents a novel vision-based approach for indoor environment monitoring by a mobile robot. The proposed system is based on computer vision methods to match the current scene with a stored one, looking for new or removed objects. The matching process uses both keypoint features and colour information. A PCA-SIFT algorithm is employed for...

Purpose – Aims to make a mobile robot able to build accurate 2D and 3D models of its environment while navigating autonomously. Design/methodology/approach – 2D map building is performed using a laser range scanner. The map is used by the robot to both localize itself and recognize places already explored. This is the well‐known simultaneous local...

The aim of this article is to illustrate how it is possible to design and build low cost mobile robots by using only simple commercial electronic devices and toys. As suggested by Valentino Braitenberg [1] in his experiments on synthetic psychology we developed two simple and compact mobile robots, each capable of doing two different autonomous beh...

The fruition of archaeological caves, hardly accessible by visitors, can benefit from a mobile vehicle which transmits to users located outside a continuous stream of images of the cave that can be visually integrated with information and data to increase the fruition and understanding of the site. This application requires self-positioning the veh...

The problem of eye detection in face images is very important for a large number of applications ranging from face recognition to gaze tracking. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for eyes detection that uses iris geometrical information for determining in the whole image the region candidate to contain an eye, and then the symmetry for sele...

This paper presents an optimization of POSIT (Pose from Orthographic and Scaling with Iterations), a model-based camera location algorithm, in the domain of indoor mobile robot navigation. The method finds the rotation matrix and the translation vector of the camera with respect to an object. The novelty of the proposed modified algorithm is that i...

This paper presents an Omnidirectional Distributed Vision System that learns to navigate a robot in an office-like environment without any knowledge about the calibration of the cameras or the robot control law. The system is composed of several omnidirectional Vision Agents (implemented with an omnidirectional camera and a computer). The first Vis...

The enjoyment and survey of archaeological caves, hardly accessible by human beings, can be executed with the aid of a mobile vehicle. In this context, a fundamental task for the autonomous robot navigation is the self-positioning with respect to a predefined target. The need of a non invasive intervention in the cave requires the use of natural la...

This paper presents an Omnidirectional Vision Agent able to learn to navigate a mobile robot in its working environment. The novelty of the work is the application of Reinforcement Learning paradigm to Vision Agents aiming to develop a totally autonomous system able to learn control policies by on-line learning, to deal with changing environment an...

This paper presents an omnidirectional distributed vision system that learns to navigate a robot in an office-like environment without any knowledge about the calibration of the cameras or the robot control law. The system is composed of several omnidirectional vision agents (implemented with an omnidirectional camera and a computer). The first vis...

The Q-learning algorithm, for its simplicity and well-developed theory, has been largely used in the last years in order to realize different behaviors for autonomous vehicles. The most frequent applications required the standard tabular formulation with discrete sets of state and action. In order to consider continues variables, function approxima...

We present a general method for detecting balls in images at the aim of automatically detecting goals during a soccer match. The detector learns the object to detect by using a supervised learning scheme called Support Vector Machines, in which the examples are views of the object. Due to the attitude of the camera with respect to football ground,...

This paper presents a vision-based technique for detecting targets of the environment which have to be reached by an autonomous mobile robot during its navigational tasks. The targets the robot has to reach are the doors of the authors' office building. The detection of the door has been performed by detecting its most significant components in the...

This paper describes a vision-bas ed system for the autonomous positioning of a mobile robot. Both the pose estimation method and the robot control system are presented. The former finds the position and attitude of the camera mounted on the robot with respect to a known 3D target using a single image. The method uses geometric considerations which...

We focus on two central issues regarding the application of support vector machines (SVM) for classification in real contexts. The first one deals with the reduction of the computational complexity of a reference classifier during the test phase, without increasing the generalization error of the classifier. In particular, we show that the complexi...

Rail inspection is very important for ensuring safety and preventing dangerous situations. Track super-structure can have different types of anomalies such as defects of rail surface and sleepers, missing of fastening elements and deviations in the contour of the ballast. In this paper we present a vision-based technique for automatically detecting...

A large number of methods for circle detection has been studied in the last years for numerous image processing applications. The application domain considered in this paper is the soccer game. To identify the ball in soccer images is very important in order to evaluate the goal event. This domain is challenging as a great number of problems has to...

We address two aspects related to the exploitation of support vector machines (SVM) for classification in real application domains, such as the detection of objects in images. The first one concerns the reduction of the run-time complexity of a reference classifier without increasing its generalization error. We show that the complexity in test pha...

In this paper we focus on two central issues regarding the application of Support Vector Machines (SVM) for classification in real contexts. The first one concerns the reduction of the computational complexity of a reference classifier during testing, without increasing its generalization error. At this aim we use Principal Component Analysis (PCA)...

In this paper we present a vision-based technique for detecting targets of the environment which has to be reached by an autonomous mobile robot during its navigational task. The targets the robot has to reach are the doors of our office building. Color and shape information are used as identifying features for detecting principal components of the...

A problem related to the use of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms on real robot applications is the difficulty of measuring the learning level reached after some experience. Among the different RL algorithms, the Q-learning is the most widely used in accomplishing robotic tasks. The aim of this work is to a priori evaluate the optimal Q-values...

We present a technique for detecting goals during a football match by using images acquired by a single camera placed externally to the field. The method does not require the modification neither of the ball nor of the goalmouth. Due to the attitude of the camera with respect to the football ground, the system can be thought of as an electronic lin...

Developing elementary behavior is the starting point for the realization of complex systems. In this paper we will describe a learning algorithm that realizes a simple goal-reaching behavior for an autonomous vehicle only visual information about the goal is provided. The system has to reach a door from every position of the environment. The state...

We present a learning algorithm that realizes a simple goal-reaching task for an autonomous vehicle when only visual information about the goal is provided. The robot has to reach a door from every position of the environment. The state of the system is based on visual information received by a TV camera placed on the mobile robot. The vision algor...